15 years after toddler's murder, abuse hotline bill still stagnant

Last year, 30,000 calls weren't investigated

Shouldn't the state do whatever it takes to try to prevent child abuse as horrific as this? The mother and her boyfriend burned the 3-year-old boy with lit cigarettes. They scorched him with steaming water. They beat him while his blood gushed and his tiny bones broke. They threw him down the stairs and across the

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By STEVE ISRAEL

recordonline.com

By STEVE ISRAEL

Posted Mar. 31, 2013 at 10:40 PM

By STEVE ISRAEL

Posted Mar. 31, 2013 at 10:40 PM

Child abuse hotline calls

800-342-3720: That's the number to report a suspected case of child abuse. Your call will be screened by experts trained to evaluate child abuse. If the call is found worthy of further investigatio...

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Child abuse hotline calls

800-342-3720: That's the number to report a suspected case of child abuse. Your call will be screened by experts trained to evaluate child abuse. If the call is found worthy of further investigation, it is sent to the local county's Department of Social Services for investigation. You can call as many times as you want and give as much information as possible. You can also ask to speak with a supervisor. Your call will remain anonymous if you wish.

The New York State Department of Child and Family Services states that in 2012:

Shouldn't the state do whatever it takes to try to prevent child abuse as horrific as this? The mother and her boyfriend burned the 3-year-old boy with lit cigarettes. They scorched him with steaming water. They beat him while his blood gushed and his tiny bones broke. They threw him down the stairs and across the

room again and again — "like a rag doll," says former Sullivan County District Attorney Steve Lungen, who prosecuted the case.

Then they left the boy with curly brown hair and big brown eyes on a picnic table.

The boy's name was Christopher Gardner — "God's Gift Returned to God," says his tiny gravestone, engraved with the dates of his short life, May 18, 1994 — April 1, 1998. Monday is the 15th anniversary of Christopher's murder.

"If you grid-squared Christopher Gardner, you couldn't find a grid inch without a bruise, a blue mark, or burn," says Lungen.

But what makes Chris' brutal death even more horrific is this: It might have been prevented.

Two telephone calls reporting previous abuse of Gardner to the state's child abuse hotline were never investigated. One call was from a mandated reporter — a school principal, one of several professions required to report such abuse because, says the state, "they are specially equipped" to report "child abuse or maltreatment."

This is why state Sen. John Bonacic, R-C-Mount Hope, has proposed a law that would require the state child abuse hotline to immediately investigate all reports of abuse by such mandated reporters as physicians, nurses, social workers and law enforcement personnel.

The bill, first introduced in 1999, has repeatedly passed the state Senate — by a 59-0 margin last year. Yet the legislation has never made it past the Assembly's Children and Families Committee for an Assembly vote, even though it's been significantly watered down to make to it easier to pass.

"You can't stop evil people from doing evil things, but you can try to prevent it, and punish it more substantially when it does occur," Bonacic said in an e-mail, adding, "The legislation we have in now addresses one way to try and prevent serious child abuse — mandatory follow-up when a trained professional calls the hotline attempting to report abuse — it says the hotline can't ignore it."

So why hasn't the Assembly passed the bill? Shouldn't it do whatever's necessary to try to prevent the sort of horrific abuse that ended the life of a 3-year-old boy before he could count to 10, ride a bicycle or spell his name?

The answer provides a window into the political and economic realities of cash-strapped Albany.

Five years ago, when the question was posed to the chairman of the Assembly's Children and Families Committee, William Scarborough, D-Queens, he first seemed to misinterpret the bill. He said that calls from mandated reporters would "in a sense bypass the state."

In fact, just about any abuse complaint must first go to the state's child abuse hotline. The state would then refer it to local authorities if the complaint is deemed worth investigating. The hotline is staffed by many former child abuse caseworkers who are "very experienced child protective services specialists," and can screen the calls to detremine if the complaints are valid, says a spokeswoman for the state's Office of Family and Child Services.

The Children and Families Committee chairwoman in 2012, Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale, offered practical reasons why not every call from a mandated reporter is referred locally by those who take calls at the child abuse hotline. In fact, of the more than 135,000 calls from mandated reporters in 2012, about three-quarters were investigated. That means more than 30,000 calls from those mandated reporters were not referred to local districts for investigation.

There has to be some degree of screening, Paulin said, because the hotline receives "a lot of frivolous or prank calls."

Otherwise, she adds, investigating all the calls locally would "burden the system."

That would mean adding more hotline workers — and more money to the state's payroll.

"If you followed up every case, and you don't add personnel, you're taking the child protective workers and giving them twice or one-third more caseloads and you're not following up on the kids that need help and might not get it."

Lungen — who 15 years later can still recite virtually every square inch of Christopher's injuries — knows about the conflict between financial reality and using every tool necessary to prevent crime. After all, he was an elected district attorney who had to lobby for money for law enforcement and crime prevention.

So he understands that following up every call to the hotline might stress finances and personnel.

"To some extent, that's probably true," he said.

But Lungen also knows that a report of abuse by a mandated reporter should carry extra weight.

"It bothers me that they balk at dollars and cents when a child's life is at stake," he says. That's why, for Lungen, the bottom line on Bonacic's bill is this:

"Do I think the legislation should be passed? Yes."

For now, the new chairwoman of the Assembly's Child and Families Committee isn't closing the door on the legislation.

Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, D-Binghamton, says she is "familiar with the senator's bill" and will be "checking into it for a better understanding" of its implications.

Meanwhile, as the 15th Easter Sunday since Christopher Gardner's murder passes, the body of the boy who spurred that legislation lies in his tiny casket in Middletown's Hillside Cemetery, beneath a gravestone that reads "Christopher Irwin Gardner May 18, 1994 — April 1, 1998. God's Gift Returned to God."

A purple, pink and yellow plastic pinwheel spins above the grave. A toy yellow school bus sits on the gravestone. And a chocolate Easter bunny in its plastic package rests in front of that grave, unopened.